


The Doting Widow

by Ernmark (M_Moonshade)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, Grief, but trying anyway, people not being able to handle the basics of friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-09-15 19:44:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9253349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/Ernmark
Summary: Still grieving for Tony, Julian decides to hire Juno to be his personal detective and/or protector and/or best friend.





	1. Chapter 1

I have to work harder to aim, now. Even at a reasonable ten meters, I have to think hard, focus my breathing, measure the size of the target and calculate the distance in my head. It takes so much of my attention that I don’t even notice the voice coming from the door of the shooting range. Mostly I assume that someone turned a radio on or something, and this is just another overblown commercial for Saffron Pharmaceuticals.

Until the commercial says my name.

“Juno?”

He’s running down the hall toward me, his body subsumed by a shapeless shadowy mass. I really do recognize his voice then, and it’s a good thing, too—because I’ve got a charged laser in my hand and an all too vivid memory of another amorphous monster fresh in my head.

“Oh, Juno, there you are! Really, I should have known you’d be here—my knight in shining armor, practicing his aim.”

I put down the gun and pull off the tinted safety goggles. “What the hell are you doing here, Julian?”

“Hush!” Before I can get out of his reach, Julian’s finger is over my lips, because who needs personal space, anyway? “You mustn’t let anyone know I’m here. Can’t you see I’m _incognito_?”

Anyone else might have been kidding. “You had to fold your hat in half to fit it through the door.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asks blankly.

The hat is enormous, its brim so wide that he can barely touch its edges with his outstretched hands, and it’s draped with endless layers of crinoline that obscure the shape of his body, but somehow don’t manage to hide the fact that he’s dripping in Saturnian silk and platinum.

It takes a moment, and then realization dawns on him. “Oh, but you’re absolutely right, Juno. We shouldn’t talk in such a public place. Come with me—I have a limo waiting.”

That’s about as much say as I get before I’m dragged out of the range and into the back of a limo. From the moment I put down my gun to the moment we arrive in his parlor, he’s drowning me in an endless stream of chatter.

“Oh, Juno, I heard about your eye—it’s absolutely dreadful, Juno, really it is. Did it hurt terribly? Oh, what am I saying, of course it did. But I must say, that eyepatch is positively dapper on you. You must tell me, who’s the designer?”  

For all his questions, he never stops talking long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. Not until we arrived in the drawing room, and the last of the servants are dismissed with dramatic, fluttering gestures.

The change is instant. As soon as the doors shut, his hands retreat back under the crinoline. His last sentence trails off, and for a moment we sit in silence so thick you could cut it with a knife.

I check his espresso, in case somebody’s dosed it with a tranquilizer. Nothing.

I’m about to search the room for other potential sources of the drug when he sighs and pulls the enormous hat off his head.

Funny—with the wide brim and all the black crinoline, I assumed it was supposed to be a callback to ancient Earth mourning fashion. It never even occurred to me that it might be hiding something. But the man under all those veils is changed: it’s only been a few months since I last saw him, but he looks like he’s aged ten years. His face is lined with stress, his eyes are dull, and there are dark circles under them that no amount of makeup can hide.

My reaction must say it all, because he offers me a grim smile. “You can say it, Juno. I look hideous, don’t I?”

“Not hideous.” On his worst days, Julian DiMaggio is still radiant compared to most people his age. That was true even before he married into the head of a pharmaceutical company. “Tired. What happened, Julian?”

“What do you think?” he hunches forward, and I remember the barista he used to be, slumped across a counter after another failed audition. “Tony died. You should know. You cleared my name, remember?”

“I remember,” I say awkwardly. Normally I don’t deal much with the bereaved after the case has been solved. “How are you holding up?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose.” He runs a hand through his hair. He must be doing that a lot lately; his hair looks like it’s thinning. “But with Tony gone, Saffron Pharmaceuticals falls entirely on my shoulders, and— and Juno, it’s exhausting. It’s not just the board meetings and the research and development and the lawsuits. I feel like I have eyes on me every second.”

“I thought you liked the attention.”

“Not like this!” Even his dramatic outbursts have lost their vivacity. “If I so much as sniffle, the whole room bursts into sympathy and well wishing.”

“Sounds awful,” I say dryly.

“It _is_ , though. None of them mean it. Most of them barely knew the first thing about my Tony, but they pretend to have been his bosom friends so I’ll think more fondly of them. I can’t even tell you how many people have offered me a shoulder to cry on, preferably while sipping champagne in a private suite. And even when people do sound sincere, all I can think is that they’re just trying to cozy up to the bereaved widower.” He takes my hands in his. “That’s why I need you, Juno. You’re the only person I trust.”

“You might want to reconsider that,” I tell him. “It didn’t end well for the last man who trusted me.”

“That’s even better—you’re so careful, you’re even suspicious of yourself. Don’t you see you’re perfect?” His voice goes soft. “Besides, I don’t have anyone else to turn to. Please, Juno.”

There’s a long moment’s silence. Am I a big enough jerk to turn him down when he’s looking at me like that?

“Okay, fine.”

Apparently not.

“So has anyone made any threats against you? Anything direct? Indirect?”

“Not exactly,” he admits. “But it’s only a matter of time before someone tries something untoward.”

He keeps me on retainer— a fat check hits my bank account every month on the month, and in exchange my line is open to him whenever he thinks he might have a problem. Turns out a guy like Julian DiMaggio can have a lot of problems in one week. It seems like he’s calling me every spare minute he’s got. At first it always starts out with a complaint about some disingenuous well-wisher or a comment that was way out of line, but pretty soon it starts devolving into gossip and his usual carrying-on. Half the time I let Rita pick up the call instead—the two of them spend so much time chatting that I’d yell at her for not getting any work done if she wasn’t entertaining the man who was indirectly signing her paycheck each week. One weekend, Julian takes Rita and her book club out to an opera, and they spend the whole ride back hashing out the best possible outcome of the love triangle.

I talk him into getting a puppy, just because that might give him something to do that doesn’t involve bothering me—and now every fifteen minutes I get a notification on my phone and the sounds of cooing through my door as Rita fawns over yet another puppy photo. Then he’s sending us other photos—here’s a pretty flower, here’s his impression of his head accountant, here’s a rug that might really tie the room together. And then the packages start arriving. Little trinkets that he claims made him think of us. Clothes that might suit us. A new car for Rita on her birthday.

And then he crosses a line.

A few months into our arrangement, Tony’s limo is waiting outside my office when I arrive in the morning. He’s already inside with Rita—and with a woman I don’t recognize. He introduces her as a specialist in cybernetic implants.

I turn around and walk right back out.

Julian chases me onto the street—he’s still wearing one of those ridiculous mourning hats, though this one is small enough that it only gets caught in the door once on his way outside.

“Get lost, DiMaggio,” I snap the second he’s within hearing range, but he isn’t the type to be chased away with a bark. I might slug him.

“Juno, what is it? Is something wrong?”

I whirl on him. “Don’t you give me that crap. The hell were you thinking bringing that woman in here?”

He just blinks at me through the crinoline. “I thought I hired you to protect me, and you’re always saying how your aim hasn’t been the same since you lost your eye, and—”

“I don’t need you to fix me!” I snarl, getting in his face. “I don’t need your doctor, and I don’t need your charity!”

He shrinks back like I’ve hit him. When he speaks, he sounds hurt. “I know being in my company isn’t necessarily your favorite pastime, but I hoped you didn’t think of it as _charity_ , Juno.”

And suddenly I feel like we’re on two different tracks. So I stop, and I look harder at him.

Here is Julian DiMaggio: first a nobody, then a prince, then the trophy husband of a doting billionaire—and after a decade of being fawned over and adored, the love of his life dies in his arms, and he’s suddenly a CEO surrounded by efficient yes-men who won’t even give him room to grieve.

He doesn’t need a charity to assuage his guilt about not being able to save Tony. He needs a friend. So he latches onto the one person without enough sense not to talk back to him, and he bribes me with cash and gifts in hopes that I’ll stick around.

Even secondhand, that’s a shitty way to feel.

“That’s not what I meant, Julian. It’s not like that.” I scrub a hand down my face. It really is hard to look at him when he’s acting so timid. “I just… all the gifts and stuff… it’s a bit much, okay?”

“Is it?” he asks, genuinely confused. “But Tony and I—we loved giving each other presents. You know how it is…” Suddenly his eyes go wide. “Oh, Juno, you didn’t think—oh, I didn’t mean it like _that_. I mean, you’ve got your own rugged charm, Juno, really you do, but I’m really not looking right now.” He’s flustered now, but at least he doesn’t look like he’s about to cry anymore. “It’s just—I like taking care of people, don’t you see? It’s what I do. With Saffron and with Tony—but oh, Juno, if it’s too much, you should tell me these things. We can go back right now, and we’ll send the doctor away, and we can… do other things. No more gifts.”

I sigh. Because that’s Julian for you. “No, don’t. She’s already here. I might as well hear her out.”

“Oh, splendid! And you don’t need to worry about the prices—money is no object—” He catches himself. “That is, unless you… want… it to be?”

You know, for a guy who grew up broke, Julian has no concept of scale when it comes to money. I guess that’s something you lose when you’re that rich for so long. But he picked up a few other things along the way. While the specialist is giving me her spiel about cybernetic implants, he’s hitting her with a barrage of legal and medical questions so complicated that I’m not sure they’re even in Martian, but after the fact he assures me that I don’t need to worry about a few dozen loopholes and contingencies that she might have exploited otherwise. And it’s nice, seeing him so proud of himself. 

I’m still making up my mind about whether I want my procedure. As useful as a cybernetic eye might be, I’m learning to shoot just fine with what I’ve got.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian meets Peter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was filled out as part of my series of writing promtps: 
> 
> the-law-of-progress asked:  
> If you are taking prompts, maybe something to continue the Julian DiMaggio and Juno friendship, but with added Peter Nureyev? So Nureyev comes back, and lives with Juno all happily and DiMaggio finds out and the two become best friends. Julian then finds out about Peter's eyesight problems and his habit of constantly denting his glasses, so Julian naturally buys him 50 pairs of indestructible frames, with prescription lenses (patented by Saffron, of course)

I hit the floor hard, my head still spinning from the punch. When the world slows down, it’s a blur of red-stained abstraction. I’m no longer wearing my glasses. Judging by the amount of blood pouring into my left eye, one of the lenses must have gouged into my forehead before they fell away completely. Instinctively I sweep my hands across the floor in front of me, but my glasses are gone.  

I dropped my knife, but I’ve always got another up my sleeve– literally, in this case. Being unarmed isn’t the problem. Even if I can’t see well, I can make enough sense of moving shapes and colors to identify humans moving around me. I can’t aim well enough in this state to make their deaths quick or pretty, but I don’t have to.

Or rather, I wouldn’t have to. Except one of those whirling bodies belongs to Juno, and I can’t tell which one. 

But clearly he’s spotted me.  “Jesus– Peter!” 

Light flashes across my vision as Juno lets loose with his sidearm, and I can identify everyone who isn’t Juno by the way they gasp before they hit the ground. Before I know it, an entire warehouse full of Triad thugs is on the ground and I’m being cradled in Juno’s arms. It would be quite a comfortable place to be, if not for the obvious panic in his voice.

“Peter, are you alright? How’s your eye?” 

Oh. Yes. That must be rather alarming for him to see, mustn’t it?

“Just a scratch, love,” I assure him, wiping the blood out of my eye. “Head wounds always look more gruesome than they really are. Though I seem to have misplaced my glasses…?”

Juno vanishes from my side for half a moment. When he gets close enough that I can see his expression– that is, a few inches from my face– it’s sheepish and remorseful.

“Sorry about that.” He presses my glasses into my hand, and I can feel why without having to bring them to my face. The frames are twisted into surreal corkscrew angles, and the lenses themselves have been reduced to shards of glass. That will be annoying. But the expression Juno makes is that of a man bracing for an explosion, so I don’t let myself voice my annoyance. The last thing I want is for him to blame himself for this.

“Ah, well. Such are the risks, aren’t they? But I’m sure I have a spare set in my things. Shall we?” 

For such a charming lady, Juno can be quite the gentleman when he wants to be. After he helps me to my feet and retrieves my knife and glasses, he offers me his arm and guides me over the bodies and debris that litters the warehouse, careful to make sure I never so much as stumble. When we reach his apartment, he even offers to help me look for my spare pair of glasses. 

Which is when my little white lie falls apart.

The glasses I wore today were my spare pair, left over after I lost the others in a fight on Callisto a few years back. I kept meaning to get another set, but I never did manage to get around to it. It never seemed too pressing a priority; after all, who needs to prepare for a fight when one can simply avoid getting caught in the first place? 

“I’ll schedule an appointment,” Juno says without hesitation, despite the fact that money is tight and he hasn’t scheduled a doctor’s visit for himself since… honestly, I’d rather not guess how long. 

He’s barely started entering numbers into his phone when the door bursts open, as if the mere mention of doctor’s appointments has scheduled this creature from some fantastical plane. I can’t decipher much of it, just an enormous black blob shrouded in smokey gray. 

“Juno? Oh, dear Juno, I was just on the phone with Rita, and she told me you’d been in a fight. I just had to come right over. Are you hurt? Is it dreadful?”

It’s strange. For all that I’d teased Juno about looking at other people, I’ve never felt the need for jealousy. But then, I don’t usually hear other men fawning over my detective so… _enthusiastically_. 

Apparently the other man has finally spotted me, too, because he gasps dramatically. “Oh, Juno, who’s this? A client? Friend? Foe?” His voice pitches low and suggestive. “ _Lover?_ ” He claps his hands together. “Oh, you simply _must_ introduce us.” 

Juno clears his throat and lays his hand on my shoulder. “This is Julian DiMaggio. And Julian, this is…” I can feel him going over a list of my aliases inside his mind. “Richard Ivy.” He hesitates. “We call him Rex.”

“ _The_ Rex! Oh yes, Rita’s told me _so_ much about you!” Before I know it, he’s got my hands clasped in his. “Taking good care of dear Juno, I hope.” I don’t miss his innuendo. What exactly has Rita been telling him? 

“I certainly hope so,” I say more delicately than I would like.

“That’s quite the black eye you’ve got. You weren’t in the fight with him, were you? Oh, I can just see it– two investigators, against the world and all alone save for each other. How romantic. You know, that cut over your eye will make for quite a handsome scar when it heals.”

Juno’s arm wraps around my shoulder protectively. “Listen, Julian, we’re gonna have to do the rest of the introductions some other time. Rex’s glasses got smashed in the fight, and we need to–” 

“Did they now? Rita never mentioned you wore glasses.” The change in the Prince of Mars’ voice is striking. In an instant the gushing dramatics dry up, revealing a shrewd businessman. “Juno, I told you about the little crack we made in the Optomatrix monopoly on eyewear, didn’t I? Just a little thing, really– lack of competition has made them sluggish. I don’t think their R&D has come up with anything new since that lawsuit about the x-ray vision. Absolutely shameful. I’m sure with some prodding, my labs can put something together in a couple of hours. Just a prototype, mind you, officially anyway.” 

Juno’s arm on my shoulder flexes imperceptibly. “What are you getting at, Julian?” 

The Prince of Mars is suddenly so close that the crinoline of his hat is pressed against my face. His features are still blurry at the edges, but not so much that I can’t see the light in his eyes. “How would you like to help me test the prototype for a new line of unbreakable glasses?”

Suddenly I reconsider my assessment of this man. He and I might just get along nicely.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AlderGroves and DeathToTheCrows requested I continue the Doting Widow series, and gave me some excellent ideas for how to proceed.

I’m fighting right up to the last minute.

I know there’s no point– the dress is designed, manufactured, delivered, and already practically stitched onto my body– but it’s the principle of the thing.

“How the hell am I supposed to move in this?” I demand. “What if there’s a fight?”

“Don’t be silly, Juno,” Julian titters. “It’s a ball, not a brawl.”

“You sure about that? Last fancy party I went to, I wound up handcuffed and in a fist fight with a stripper. The goddamn thing was scheduled to end with a murder/suicide.”

“Oh, I heard about that one,” he says. “But that’s book release parties for you– they’re awfully gimmicky.”

I glare at him. “Isn’t _this_ a release party?”

“For a pharmaceutical company, not a publishing house. Our events are much more refined.”

“Of course they are.” The party is for the official release of Saffron’s new eyewear line. Peter and I will be mingling with the crowd and showing off two of the new product lines– fashionable glass eyes, in my case, and indestructible glasses, in his. It’s as good an excuse as any to question dozens of blue bloods without them hiding behind armies of security guards and lawyers. Hell, you put them in fancy suits and cocktail dresses and suddenly they’re _bragging_ about the shit they’ve done. Sure, they’ll keep their mouths shut about corporate espionage and embezzlement, but everything else is right out in the open.

I try for my old strategy of making small talk at the punch bowl, but it doesn’t last long. This isn’t like Ingrid Lake’s party– nobody gets into a party like this without an invitation and a pedigree. Aside from a bit of arm candy laughing too hard at their partners’ jokes, the people here are from one of those social circles where everyone knows everyone, and they aren’t about to chat it up with a lady they’ve never met.

At least, not until Julian makes his move.

“Oh, _there_ he is! Over here, Juno!” Before I can run for it, Julian’s got me by the arm and is dragging me into a crowd of blue-bloods. “That’s a Saffron original he’s wearing– gorgeous, isn’t it?” 

I wouldn’t call it ‘gorgeous’ so much as ‘flashy’. The false eye is perfectly smooth, but it’s laser-etched to have all the refracting shine of a cut diamond. It’s not the kind of look I could normally get away with wearing, but I have to admit, the dress really makes it work. 

“Rather brave of you, showing it off like that,” sniffs a lady in a tux.

Before I can scowl at her, Julian bursts in. “Oh, Deborah, he’s brave for more than that! Why, didn’t you hear? He _saved_ me.” 

“Julian,” I say through clenched teeth. “Maybe this isn’t the right place for this kind of conversation.” The last thing I need to do is be outed as a PI in front of all these people. I’m wearing the dress for a reason, dammit. 

He pats my arm. “Oh, don’t be modest, Juno!” He titters. And then he launches into the most ridiculous story I’ve ever heard. I recognize bits and pieces– teleportation tornadoes make an appearance, among other details– but it’s almost completely fiction. The fact that I’m a detective never even comes up.

“It runs in his family, you know,” he assures the crowd. I’ve got to say, Julian’s stories may be ridiculous, but at least they’re entertaining. “He can trace his lineage back to some of the first colonists on Mars. I can just picture it, Juno: your great great grandfather, riding a rocket steed and righting the outlaw wrongs of the wild Martian frontier–” 

I’m pretty sure none of that ever happened. In fact, I don’t know what’s going on here at all– until I spot Peter at the edge of the crowd. 

The thing about the chronically rich? While they’re busy thinking about corporate empires and the security of their stock portfolios, they get pretty lax about the basics. It doesn’t even occur to them that one of the people in this room grew up a pickpocket. 

Julian keeps them going until just after Peter searches the last of the gathered crowd, and then he transitions seamlessly into technical babble about Saffron’s latest advancements. It’s dry as sand even for stockholders, and the crowd starts to disperse. 

“Did you find anything?” Julian asks, more quiet than his usual dramatic trill. 

“Five solid leads, and three more that had the sense to be more discrete,” Peter muses. “Juno, shall I leave those to you?”  

I’m glaring as well as I can with a goddamn diamond in my eye socket. “Would the two of you mind informing me before you make me your diversion next time?”

“Of course, Juno.” Julian gives my arm one last affectionate pat before he releases me again. “Anything you say.”


End file.
